Charles Dickens

Associated Press

Charles Dickens was born on Feb. 7, 1812, and died June 9, 1870. His obituary in The New York Times began, “The death of Mr. Charles Dickens creates a greater gap in English literature than the loss of any other one man could have occasioned. He was incomparably the greatest novelist of his time.”

The following is an extract from Michael Slater, “Dickens, Charles John Huffam (1812–1870),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, copyright Oxford University Press, reproduced with permission.

From a very early period of Dickens’s career many of his great comic and/or grotesque characters took on a life of their own in the culture (both high and low) of the English-speaking world and have ever since been recognized and referred to by people who may well have never read a single Dickens novel. This resulted from his extraordinary ability to create, and give unforgettably expressive names to, figures who are highly individualized by their physical appearance, dress, and mannerisms, and who are also powerfully allegorical, being brilliant incarnations of various aspects of perennial human nature.

Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, Oliver Twist asking for more, the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Sikes and the murder of Nancy, the death of Little Nell, Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Mr. Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp, Uriah Heep, Mr. Micawber hourly expecting something to turn up and Mrs. Micawber refusing to desert him — these are some of the main Dickens characters and scenes that have been, and continue to be, drawn on over and over again by advertisers, illustrators, cartoonists, journalists, politicians, and public speakers generally throughout the English-speaking world to point a moral or adorn a tale, to satirize or to celebrate some contemporary figure or state of affairs.

After Shakespeare, Dickens is probably the most quoted writer in English and, indeed, the names of certain characters, Bumble and Scrooge, for instance, have become part of the language itself. The same is true of the adjective “Dickensian” which, depending on the context, is used to mean one of three things: festive or jolly (a Dickensian Christmas, for example); squalid or antiquated (as in “a Dickensian slum” or “to work in positively Dickensian conditions”); characters so idiosyncratic and improbable as to seem to belong in a Dickens novel (“a truly Dickensian waiter”).

The general concept of Victorian London derives in great measure from Dickens’s elaborate, haunting descriptions of labyrinthine courts and alleyways, quaint old buildings, fogs, gaslight, and teeming street life; and tourists still come to the capital from all over the world eager to discover and experience “Dickens’s London.”

At his death Dickens was regarded by the great mass of his contemporaries not simply as a great writer but also as a great and good man, a champion of the poor and downtrodden, who had striven hard throughout his whole career for greater social justice and a better, kinder world.

For the full Dickens entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, click here.

Nov. 25, 2012

Rupert Holmes's play Mystery of Edwin Drood, now at Studio 54 in a Roundabout Theater revival, embraces the fact that the book it is based on was left unfinished when its author Charles Dickens died; half way through each performance the audience votes on how the play will end; Dickens's own mysterious double life is described in Michael Slater's book The Great Charles Dickens Scandal. MORE

Jul. 8, 2012

Adam H Graham travel article follows a snowy mountain pass in a quest to discover why Charles Dickens once lived in Switzerland, returning throughout his lifetime. MORE

Feb. 12, 2012

Sam Anderson article describes visiting Dickens World, a theme park in London, England based on the works of Charles Dickens. MORE

Feb. 6, 2012

Op-Ed article by law clerk Joseph Tartakovsky observes, on the eve of the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, that one of the forms of wickedness that the novelist most decried was the lawyer; compares the role of the lawyer and the novelist in society, and concludes that in many ways they are the same; asserts that while Dickens envisioned a better society, it required lawyers and the law to bring it about. MORE

Jan. 15, 2012

Editorial reflects on the life and writings of Charles Dickens, who would have been 200 in February 2012. MORE

Dec. 25, 2011

Maureen Dowd Op-Ed column reflects on how the novelist Charles Dickens, who is widely credited as the 'inventor of Christmas,' felt about the day, by looking at his writing. MORE

Dec. 18, 2011

Simon Callow reviews books A Boy Called Dickens, written by Deborah Hopkinson and illustrated by John Hendrix, Charles Dickens: Scenes From an Extraordinary Life, written and illustrated by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom, Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London by Andrea Warren and Charles Dickens: England's Most Captivating Storyteller by Catherine Wells-Cole. MORE

Nov. 6, 2011

David Gates reviews books Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin and Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. MORE

Oct. 25, 2011

Michiko Kakutani reviews books Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin and Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. MORE